The Calculating Stars (The Lady Astronaut, #1)

The Calculating Stars (The Lady Astronaut, #1)
Mary Robinette Kowal, 2018

Hugo winner - 2019

Premise: Elma York is a brilliant mathematician and a skilled pilot. But it's 1958, and the powers that be aren't ready for women to become astronauts until the space race becomes necessary for survival.

Oh, how to talk about this book? The beginning is brilliant and the ending is brilliant, but some of the parts in the middle gave me anxiety. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it just made it a bit harder to read.

Elma herself has severe anxiety from past traumas after years of trying to exist (attend college, serve in the military, etc.) around men as a smart, strong-willed woman. And I ached for her even as, from my position in the future, I was sometimes frustrated with her too. In this case, that just means she was realistically written.

The writing is compelling, the historical research thorough, and the characters wonderful. Elma and her husband (also a rocket scientist) have a happy partnership and a lively sex life. Other than a few moments caused by her own insecurity, I liked that all the drama was external to their relationship. 

My own anxiety stemmed more from the premise. An enormous meteor strikes Earth, speeding up climate change to the point that interplanetary colonization is probably vital for the survival of the species. But of course, there are people who can't or won't believe in the danger. Or who try to ensure that only white men are going to space or getting help after the initial disaster. That's where the realism became all too real for me. 

While the Broken Earth series was just that, a series, following that trilogy with this one makes it four Hugo-winning novels in a row that reference society-ending environmental collapse. Not a subtle trend, that.

By the end, this book has found some hard-won optimism, and as I said, the ending is perfect. It's a marvelous achievement overall. 

 5 Stars - an Awesome Book